Now is the time that you can listen to the dhamma
talk. After you have practiced vipassanā
meditation for such a long time, you should experience and see the truth within
yourself.

Not with ideas or theories that you read in
books. The truth that you should discover or see for yourself is the truth of
suffering. The ongoing process of the psycho-physical reality, that there is
pain and suffering, and that it's not comfortable.

With your ego, your personal identity, it is not
easy to accept this. After many days here you are confronted with yourself,
with your attachments, with what belongs to you. And it's not easy to handle,
because many times you are so desperate, disappointed and lamenting. Depressions caused by your karma makes you remember many things from your earlier
life. Things from the past which
are still here with you and keep coming a lot in your meditation practice.

It's important that you recognize that there is
karma and that there is a result of karma. It's mostly bad karma that makes you
unhappy, but at the same time this is the beginning of your wisdom, the
beginning of your freedom.

You have to practice a lot to remove the cause
of your suffering, to recognize the suffering and naming and noting it. If you
do not name or note your suffering, suffering can overwhelm you, or it can be
the cause that you stop the continuation of your mindfulness.

It's very important to look at the feeling.
Feeling is very dominant in us all the time. If you cannot master your feeling,
you will always suffer.

Enlightenment has nothing to do with feeling. If
feeling makes you happy, it's merely an illusion. It can be the illusion of
thought, the illusion of perception or the illusion of your ideas that makes
you happy, but there is no truth and there is no real happiness. If you want to
obtain true happiness in life, you have to stop the feeling. If a feeling makes
you happy, that's only a mundane or worldly happiness. To get supramundane
happiness you have to go beyond the feeling.

Now we go to your experiences in your meditation
here in the retreat. Many times you are confused. You do not feel good. Let's
say: you do not know how or why. In fact that is already a result of the
practice, but for you, for your ego, you are scared.

You do not like it to be that way, but you let
it happen. You keep on practicing because of the continuation of mindfulness here
and now. On time and all the
time having your recognition on the object.

Also many times you feel good with certain
objects that you are aware of. When you begin to see your preferences for
something, you have to note that. If you do not note that, you go on with that
preference. You let the feeling be because you like it. Your continuation of
mindfulness is not there anymore. Then it's just a feeling, a good feeling that
you prefer.

Then you're not practicing mindfulness on the
four foundations anymore. You have to start always again, because when certain
things, like deeper concentration, happen, it makes you happy, it makes you
feel good, it makes you enjoy. This is dangerous for vipassanā meditation.

If you have been working hard only because you
wanted that, it's not enough. If you want to feel good, you do not have to be here for so long,
two or three weeks. You can do that at home. When you amuse yourself with
certain things or when you're trying to have a good feeling, you cannot win the
stream of life.

What do you have to do? You have to watch your
mind, watch your feeling and watch your preferences. If you prefer something,
you say: 'No, this is dangerous'. If you don't say that, you lose already.

You always want to get more or you do not want
to lose what you have or what you are. When you lose something, everything
becomes uncertain. What you have is mixed with fear. When you have a good
feeling, at the same time you fear. You're afraid that you are going to lose
that good feeling. In fact it seems very foolish for people who practice vipassanā. It's very foolish to have such fear. Note it
and name it. This is an object for you to note.

Many times there is another mind-object, that you are delighted, that you're hankering, that
you're not free, because you belong to something.

You should belong to nothing. When you belong to
something, attachment is there. Desire is there, and consequently following on
from that is that you're missing, lamenting, disappointed and sorrowful. You do
not meditate for that.

But certain things come a lot. I already
mentioned earlier that you have a lot of remembrance of your life. Mostly
negative memories, and you want to stop that. When you want to stop your remembering, not
wanting to be with something you remember, this is also desire.The desire that you do not want to be with certain things existing
in yourself.
These things are negative, and you want to run away. You must know that this is
a part of your karma and that you cannot run away from your karma.

You must try to recognize for yourself, do I
prefer or not prefer what is now
existing at this
moment, I mean here and now, what is happening all the time.

If you do not prefer to be with your situation
here and now, that's real suffering. It makes you very uneasy, very unhappy.
You have to note that.

But it's less dangerous than having preferences,
because disliking can stop after you note or name. Or when you just let it be, it doesn't matter. You know that it doesn't feel good, but you
are not subject to it anymore.

But the preference is dangerous, because you
want to stay along with something, with your delusion. You say: 'I'm now
fighting for the happiness in my life', but it's not true happiness, it's not
guaranteed, this kind of happiness. And it's not free,
it's merely a mundane happiness that you prefer.

You must take care that you name and note the
very beginning of your preferences, of what you like, what makes you happy.
First you say: 'No, I don't come for this'. If you want this, you don't have to
come here. Remind yourself that what you want is to go beyond. Not to be with
something that you prefer, and not not-to-be with something that you do not
prefer. You have to be beyond, what we call lokuttara or above. You have to be above.

You are above if you have a pure consciousness,
not mingled with preference or aversion. Then you are already recognizing the
state of enlightenment for that moment.

Enlightenment is only possible with the practice
of vipassanā. It's not possible with samatha practice because with samatha practice your feeling is very dominant; this
makes your ego very strong. Vipassanā
practice is different from samatha practice,
because there is no feeling in vipassanā
practice. Therefore I said to you some days ago, you must now learn to avoid
any feeling.

But many times you disapprove of what I am
saying: What is Buddhism? What is this teaching of vipassanā, if you do not have any feeling at all, what is going to be with
our life?

If you have such questions, then you go back to
a mundane state of mind. This is not understanding what vipassanā meditation is. I feel very sad when you have
such an understanding. Many times during the interviews, you are disappointed,
unhappy, you have pain or whatever, but as a teacher I am happy to hear that,
because it's good for vipassanā.

You have to know that Buddha, who first was a
prince, renounced, withdrew from the throne and became a wandering monk in
order to get enlightenment. After six years of searching, doing many different
types of meditation, he could not obtain the enlightenment that he was longing
for, until he discovered the four truths in life. To his satisfaction, he
realized that his searching for enlightenment was not only for himself, but for
all beings. For the wellbeing and
enlightenment of all the people. But first he had to experience it himself.

Under a bodhi-tree in Bodh Gaia, on the full moon of the sixth lunar
month, he sat in this practice to see, to conquer māra, the devil. There are many kinds of devils around us. Most
important are the devils of the five aggregates that we carry. As I said many
times already, these devils take you down. You cannot go above. You cannot
experience the supramundane state, the state of being beyond, because you
carry them.

The māra
of the five aggregates and the māra
of defilement.
These two māra's
are very next to us, and they're haunting us all the time. That means, they're
haunting us not to be free, and they are fooling us all the time. Making unreal
things real, making untrue things to be the truth, but it's just maya, illusion.

Like when you travel on the road on a sunny day,
you will see water on the road in the far distance, especially when you are in
the desert. You look in the distance, and you see the reflection on the road
that you think that's water. You run all the time to get water, but you don't
find it.

We are expecting a certain
happiness in our life, and we think that we are so near to it that we will get
it. We run after it, and run after it, and never obtain real happiness in our
life. This is maya or the illusion of the human being.

You cannot except that it is an illusion that we
can be happy in this samsāra.
There is no real happiness in samsāra. Like there is no water when you drive the car on
the road in the desert.
What do you expect to get? It's only an illusion. That the sun is contrasting
the road makes you believe that there is water, but there is no water.

It's the same with our life. You and I and
everybody, we have been searching for happiness in this world for a long time,
but we didn't find it yet. Eventually we are going to die. We die with
disappointment, with missing. Missing
the things that you had in your life.Or fear,
fear of death and uncertainty. Where are we working for our whole lives? Is it coming to an end
that way? Is that good?

No, that's not good and it doesn't have to be
like that.

We are on the track to find everlasting peace
and happiness in our life’s with our practice of vipassanā meditation.

First you have to cope with your remembrance of
your past. If there's no subject present anymore, if they cannot harm you or
they cannot disturb you, you may dare to say that you obtain peace, but you
have to work for it. Noting and naming, and those remembrances are not
following you. They are māra,
and māra cannot follow you anymore then.

And the khandha's that you carry, the aggregates, you can leave them there. You
don't bother about feelings like pain. If you die that way, māra cannot follow you. The last mārais the māraof death. Dying is māra, because
when you die without accomplishment, when you did not finish yet, you have to
go on following the samsaric process.

If you die without fear of death, you will never
die, and you will obtain nibbāna.
Last time I said that nibbāna
is absolute nothingness. Today I want to say: Nibbāna is the path that makes the deathless be, which means 'not dying'.

It's better not to die. We are going to die, but
if you are enlightened you are not dying anymore. But as a human being, as a
mundane human being we are going to die. Everybody.
But when you go beyond, then you do not die.

First we should experience that there is a state
of not-being nor death. When you find a way where no
death exists, this means that you understand nibbāna.

We are so used to the idea that we were born and
that we are going to die and we see a lot of people dying. But not with us. You have to experience death, while you're not
dying. Like all the severe pain or the severe unhappiness in this practice. If
you can go beyond that feeling, then you're not dying anymore.

If
you would die, even when you are not yet perfect enlightened, not even in the
state of the streamwinner, but you practice vipassanā,
merely recognizing the second vipassanā-ñāna,
recognizing the interrelation between nāma and rūpa,
it already guarantees for your next life that you are not going to be born in
misery, or that you die in misery.

First you must not die in misery if you do not
want to be born in misery. If you die in misery you're also automatically born
in misery. You have to get rid of your misery.

What you have done in your practice, is more
than enough for supporting your ongoing wellbeing in the samsāra at least. For this life it's enough, but it is
not a guarantee for your next life, if you are not warming it up or if you do
not have the good fortune to do the practice on the four foundations of
mindfulness.

It will not be enough until you remove the
belief in the self, until you can deny self when you are in the state of the streamwinner.
Then you cannot get into misery anymore, because self doesn't exist anymore.

I am so happy to see that you work hard here.
Sometimes I feel pity that you work so hard, while you still do not know what
you are working for. I don't want you to expect a lot eventually, but I want
you to see that you are not working for nothing.

Working hard gives you a lot of reward. That you will be free from self. That you will be free from being haunted by your
personal entity with every noting or naming you put on the contact of the
senses, the six senses.

When you have sīla it guarantees for your happiness, it guarantees for your wealth,
it guarantees for your everlasting peace in nibbāna. Sīla
is very important. When your
senses are well refrained or proper regarded, nothing can be wrong. So why do you worry? All these days you try to refrain the sense-contacts. You note at the sense-contact.

Seeing, you note 'seeing'. Every time you note
'seeing', you do not see good or bad, but you see merely seeing. When you see
without noting, you automatically go on with your program of recognizing: 'Oh,
This I like and this I dislike'. That is mundane. So when you just note
'seeing', 'seeing', you are already beyond something you like or something you
dislike. Lokuttara is there. It's always near to you.

The same with hearing. You note 'hearing', 'hearing', and you are
already beyond that you prefer or not prefer. You see merely the process of
hearing. What you hear or what you see is nothing more than
something you prefer or something you do not prefer.

With the nose: smelling, with the tongue:
contacting the food. You have to realize that every time when you go to the
dining room, you have the opportunity to practice that you are not getting in
the process of preference or aversion,
that you have
the opportunity to go beyond.

Eating: you're enlightened; drinking: you're
enlightened when you do it good. Sitting hard or dealing with the weather, cold
or hot, makes you enlightened. When you're thinking, you note: 'mind-contact
with thinkable object'.

When you note, you are enlightened. When you do
not note, you go to what you like, or to what you like to think about.

The ongoing continuation of mindfulness on the
sense-contact makes you go beyond. Then you will recognize what is lokuttara. This means above the mundane consciousness.
This lokuttara is not recording karma. An enlightened mind has
no karma. There is nothing that can follow you anymore.

It's good to see that something is following
you. If you recognize a lot what's coming after you, what you have been, that's
very good.

In fact that's your teacher. Not to commit the
karma's again, not to let the karma's occur
again. To let them free, but not let them follow you too hard, by noting and
naming.

Some meditators argue: 'Oh, why do we have to note, why do we
have to name? I'm just aware, isn't that enough’?

We have three kinds of feeling: feeling of
happiness, feeling of unhappiness and neutral feeling, what means neither
happiness nor unhappiness, but there is still feeling and in that feeling you
belong.

Awareness is self. You are aware and your
awareness makes you belong to something. You should stop your awareness to make
you not belong to something. If you're aware of nothing, then you do not belong
to something.

Then when you are aware of nothing, but you're
aware of that, you're aware of what's beyond the whole process of samsāra. That can be done with noting or naming. The
act of noting and naming is very powerful, to make you lose the mundane sense,
and to be with the supramundane consciousness.

That's how wonderful vipassanā is. I am not making propaganda, but I want you to see. Buddha,
when he sat under the bodhi-tree, he practiced this. He discovered the
cause of suffering. He knew that life is suffering, and we know that too, but
we do not know the cause.

The real cause comes with the feeling. Every
feeling of the sense-contact is leading us to the mundane process every time,
but when you note and when you name, the sense-contact is going up to lokuttara,
above the mundane.

The Buddha practiced this many times, to be very
sure. And so he became convinced, and then he announced that he was teasing māra: 'You can not follow anymore.'

He said: 'Before, where I went, you followed,
but now you cannot even find my footprint.' Enlightenment has no footprint for mārato follow, because it is not in the mundane world.

In the mundane world, in this mundane process,
where you go you leave your footprint, you leave your things there, and then
they follow you. If you don't want them to follow, you must not leave your
footprint, not make a step.

The contact of the senses are your footprints. When you note on that contact, you'll come
above, then you don't leave a footprint. Then mārawill not follow you.